At work, we're all still on Windows XP Service Pack 3 and we just had a mail that we might go to Windows 7 by the end of this year. Windows 8? Yeah, maybe in 5 years or so?
No, you're not. It's bloody annoying. Sometimes, updates go into an infinite loop as well, seriously thinking of switching to another browser on the 60 PC's I have to support in the field.
Chrome is starting to look better due to Firefox looking worse recently...
I do think the ads are pushing up the price of the products that are being advertised. Ads need to be paid for as well. So, we are actually paying more money for products so they can bombard us with ads on every occasion they get, be it TV, websites, magazines, etc...
And yes, I would rather pay for a decent service without ads, than suffer all the braindead drivel we are continuously annoyed with. Example? BBC iPlayer Global Edition - I pay happily € 6,00 every month to be able to watch excellent programs without ads.
"social networking begins to play a much larger role in buying decisions"
Not a chance. Apart from the usual crowd copying their so called friends' moronic status updates and people wishing eachother happy birthday, is social networking actually used for anything useful?
As for using it to decide what product I would buy? Nah, can't see that happening....
Is it just me, or do other people also think "the cloud" is such a bad bad name? When someone uses the term in my presence, it makes me want to kick them in the gonads, that's how bad I find it!
No mistake. They have always done this, sometimes even making "changes" to turn on all your settings you had turned off. It's a dispicable way of treating the user, but they don't care one bit.
Since I bought an iPad last year, I have not once gotten my Windows laptop out again at home. By the time that one starts up, I have already done with the iPad what I wanted to do.
By the way, I am not a fanboi, but a developer and at work I use almost exclusively Microsoft technology products.
A netbook equiped with Win XP was the only thing that was acceptable at home before, having a half decent battery life if used sensibly, but Microsoft thought it was a good idea to destroy that particular market with Win7... on one equiped with that OS, if you listen close enough, you can almost hear the battery draining.
Last netbook I had with Win7 had 2GB ram and a 64-bit processor and that only just worked acceptably with Win7 + had barely a 2 hour battery life. A bit more than that when the screen backlight was turned down so much that it hurt the eyes.
My next personal home computer will be the next iPad - whenever necessary to replace my iPad1.
Security companies have just released a press statement that a massive security vulnerability - the "user" - has been detected on most systems. He-She will be removed at the next OS update...
Indeed Sarah, but that is just my point. It's the disingenuous way in which these companies act that lets them easily explain everything away and that lets them do this. It is very dishonest but all looks so innocent that it works!
I honestly believe that not many things in this industry happen 'by accident'...
Maybe you think I'm paranoid? Hah, let me give you a couple of examples:
My wife says to me that her Facebook chat no longer appears at the bottom of her window (she uses a Mac and Firefox), so she takes our laptop which has Windows XP with IE, where she says that 'at least' she can chat. So I investigate... change the useragent on the Mac to simulate using IE under Windows and hey, magically the chat-box reappears in the window.
A week later I read in the press that IE has stopped losing market share and has re-gained a little on it's competitors. Riiight! My guess is Microsoft knows exactly how potent half a billion users are and what difference a few well-chosen tweaks can make. But this is all under the radar, and even the IT-press hasn't picked up on this stunt. I think the bond between Facebook and Microsoft is A LOT deeper than they are letting on.
Facebook chenanigans? I only use a couple of games on Facebook, one of these is Bejeweled Blitz. Now, ALL privacy settings in Facebook have been set by me using a fine tooth-comb so not a single application has the right to get my email address. Suprise surprise, this week I suddenly get an email from Bejeweled telling me that so-and-so has bettered my score.
Immediately I go to my privacy and application settings, only to find that Bejeweled has now an extra (NEW) option to let them email me, of course set to 'ON' by default. When turning it off, I get the message that it is basically too late, the application will continue to send me emails until I use the 'unsubscribe' link in one of their mails. Basically, until I confirm to them this email-address is ok, so spam away! The only promise Facebook gives is, if I choose to change my email-address, they will not communicate this address to Bejeweled. What they really mean is 'until we plant another new setting and give your address to anyone we like'! The sick part? The 'new' setting has now totally disappeared, like it was never there.
The lesson is: EVERYTHING you put on facebook is PUBLIC for everyone to see and for every company that is willing to pay for it to take full advantage of.
If I had to choose between an Android phone and a Windows7 Phone? Let's say they were both free but on top of the Windows phone I would also get 100 euro cash extra. Which one would I choose?
"It has seen millions of downloads and has been on the sharp-end of Microsoft's developer and media push in the last few years"
Nono, it is being pushed onto every new PC sold, thàt is accurate. Millions of downloads? They do try to bolt it onto every other thing you might like to download, that much is true. But real, Silverlight only downloads for the purpose of having Silverlight on your PC? Codswallop!
... to this World Cup would be that both teams would be declared as losers! This has been the year of the extremely annoying vuvuzela, the boring-to-tears matches and the incapable-to-get-anything right refereeing.
What a disgrace. All I would need now is for Holland to become the world champion to make sure I'd never watch football again.
The game is just the bait, all they're after is your personal data, which they can then sell on. Big brother IS watching us all the time.
Sooner or later, greedy creeps always shoot themselves in the foot though. Example? The Scrabble facebook game. They aren't getting enough money from your personal data, so they'll stick a minute of adds in front of the game you have to sit through before even getting to the game. That's game over for me. I don't want to spend a minute waiting for a game I'm going to spend 30 seconds on to begin with...
The thing about Facebook is also: if it had sucked so badly from the beginning as it does now, they would never have had so many users...
Very interesting article, and I look forward to read the rest of the series!
I see what you mean about new people having to learn the ropes 'somehow' and you're right of course, nobody is born an admin.
First, let me tell you what my situation is: I am employed by a large multi-national company with tens of thousands of people around the world all using computers, part of a massive AD and administered through Group policies like you talked about. The problems we are facing are badly installed software, network drives disappearing or being wrongly connected, roaming user-profiles you can only use on one PC properly, unpatched PC's which get infected with virusses, wrongly set file access rights, etc, etc... The list is endless.
So, in our case, it would be helpfull to have a couple more decent administrators and less people learning how to be one.
The vanishing of network drives got so bad that I wrote a program that my colleagues and me can use to make a personalised vbscript that we can run when needed and that will just remove badly attached drives and re-attach the ones we actually need.
Of course, the IT-services got outsourced some years ago, and since then, the situation has gradually gotten worse. People with no clue about IT inside the company making insane rules, and fresh out of school (or never having got there) outsourced admins badly implementing them.
Sorry, I feel better now. Think I'll have a drink of water and get back to work...
Better goto Groklaw, way too long to explain in one article. You'll realise once you start reading up on the case...
But, it comes down to a simple fact really, SCO did not have enough money to buy all of UNIX, including the copyrights and just acted as a... no, I'm not trying to explain, you'll have to go and read it for yourself.
My guess would be, as the license stipulates the programs have to be written in C, C++ or Objective C, and NOT through another SDK, that the chances of having this banned are rather big, no? Will be interesting to follow!
Very simple. When Silverlight is cross-platform, meaning including Linux, I might actually try it out before deciding. As long as it isn't, I will NEVER install it on any of my computers.
No, it's the old delivery system as usual, it comes installed by default with Windows 7. The same way IE had a meteoric "uptake". And the usual stealth installs with other programs like WMV-player on the Mac, you have to actively remove Silverlight from the install or you'll get it, if you want it or not.
They should put the emphasis on the database part and the connections from the rest of the applications to the data. That would make it instantly useable as a MSO replacement.
The people who are addicted to Excel are never going to be using something else anyway, as a matter of fact, in many cases, it's the ONLY thing they are able to use.
And call it Microsoft Windows Piracy Check Program, instead of using false wording like it being an advantage for the consumers? We all know it IS a breach of privacy and the advantage is only to THEM. And these wankers still don't understand that they are only annoying GENUINE consumers, the pirates laugh at this anyway.
So, WGA = Windows Genuine consumer's disAdvantage.
Adblock Plus. Simply the best Add-on ever. Haven't seen any annoying ads ever since installing that one. It's like the karate Kid's wax-on, wax-off. Add-on, ad-off ;-)
Not the same software re-launched, but just a re-using of a brandname they got in the Lotus deal. Competition's good, the more the merrier. Problem is company 'deciders' couldn't find their own backside if their life depended on it and will always go for the Ms Office option.
I have an Asus EeePC in test, with an Atom 1.33 Mhz and 2 GB Ram, and with Win7, it is slooow. Nothing to do with the poor netbook I'd say. I have also an Acer with the same Atom processor and only 1 GB of Ram, and it's twice as fast with XP on it. So, if you want a slow home server, go for it!
Couldn't agree more. Excel is the most misused program ever made. People use it for all sorts of stuff, in 99% of the cases NOT for actual spreadsheet work.
Worst case I've seen is some stupid bint using her calculator to put numbers in her Excel-sheet...
Installed on a USB key to use with my work Thinkpad and fresh install on my 5 year old desktop at home, not one problem, and everything works out of the box.
I'm impressed.
As for doing an upgrade? Never works 100%. Not with Linux, not with Windows.
Not really, I've been a Gmail user since it became available, and have never had a day I couldn't log on either... I suspect there's a few more 'lucky ones'...
oh wait, at work I'm still using Office '97. Perfectly fine piece of software and still does it's job like a well trained workhorse. I know it inside out and never have to look for a function as I know where everything is.
Every time my PC gets changed I have a major battle on my hands to keep '97 on it, but in the end, a few threats to the IT dept usually work a charm.
I have tried newer versions occasionaly, but to me it seems that they get worse with every iteration.
At home, it's been OO for as long as I care to remember. Gets used very infrequently anyway. On my mac I had a 30-day tryout of Office for Mac and I used it exactly once, then deleted it.
Mine's the one with the Office '97 cd in the pocket...
For work + personal use I estimate that I have more than 50 passwords to remember, a lot of them which have to be changed frequently. Most systems also use their own specific set of rules for making a new valid password. This is of course utter madness!!
So, I have written my own encryption software to store all these in a file. The encryption uses rotating realtext and goes randomly up to a hundred levels deep. The strong master password (which is the only one to remember) is also encrypted randomly somewhere in the same file, but to a different random encryption level than the rest of the file.
Good luck to anyone trying to get anything out of that data. But this is the level of mad things we are having to go through to keep track of all those passwords!
Don't talk to me anout centrally stored ids like Open-id or similar, I trust these even less. Get this one hacked and they own all your stuff in one go.
Same here, the 'evolving to Twitter' is extremely annoying, and if we didn't have family abroad to keep in contact with, I would have dumped the site ages ago.
The interface problems you talk about are indeed making the user experience a misery at best. Settings and options are never where you would expect them, and purposefully hidden so people wouldn't bother protecting their privacy - just because it is such a pain and very time consuming.
But, it is true though - 'achieving critical mass' has happened and FB is now sort of the Microsoft of social networking. We don't like 'em, but we now 'have' to use them. And, just like Windows, we don't really, but we fool ourselves into thinking we do.
Even if something much better comes along, critical mass is going to make it very difficult to switch over, unless you can convince your contacts to do the same.
Installing Vista on a desktop with Nvidia graphics card, run of the mill motherboard with Nvidia 2 chipset, a Topcom wireless adapter, an HP printer and a cheap webcam. Result: no drivers for the motherboard chipset, no drivers for the wireless adapter. Vista not working.
Installed since then Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04, openSuse 11.1, and Mandriva 2008, ALL worked without asking for any driver, wireless card just works, even the webcam.
In case you wonder why all the different distributions? It's a system with removable harddisks, so I can switch the OS in a matter of seconds, and I like to experiment.
"An Intellectual Ventures spokesperson told The Reg: "As part of our portfolio management responsibilities, we do regularly sort through our inventions to ensure the assets we hold apply to our primary areas of business."
OUR inventions? Hah! That is just the problem, they invent nothing.
Their primary area of business? Squeezing money out of hardworking people and companies and at the same holding back real innovations and harming the real economy.
One change to the rotten patent system is needed --> make patents NON-transferable! Only the original inventor (and I'm using the word in a loose sense here) can enforce - or not - his patents. All these leeches will immediately be out of 'business'.
@Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 9th July 2009 11:25 GMT
I just went to the Dell website for Belgium. I have 3 choices my friend: windows XP Home in French, Dutch or English. No Ubuntu.
@B 9:
No, you plonker, I do not want a netbook 'manufactured' in Belgium - I want to BUY it in Belgium. I don't want to order it abroad, pay immediately, wait six weeks and then get it delivered broken.
@Outcast:
Thanks for the tip. Indeed, apart from that small detail of where I live, perfect suggestion ;-))
But... I prefer the feel of a paper book. Anyway, at such a price, can you imagine how many books I can buy at the http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ for that amount of money?
Just bought 'Digital Fortress' by Dan Brown for € 7.50 - with free delivery. No competition really.
I tried to purchase a Linux netbook some months ago here - ALL the shops, without exception only had netbooks with XP on them. When asking the shopkeepers why you get no sensible comments, apart from 'they come delivered like that'. Another monopolistic strong-arm tactic no doubt.
Did I buy one? NO. First give money to Microsoft and then put the time in myself wiping their shite off it and installing everything myself? Why should I?
I'm still a potential customer for a Linux netbook. Anyone?
(and no, I don't want to order one online from some other country)
It's faster, all my add-ons still work, and an annoying bug finally got taken care of - the blanking out of 'Open in New Tab' when right-clicking on an RSS-feed.
What? Is there any point in having a password for anything if world+dog can simply look over your shoulder, read it while you type it and use it behind your back.
The whole problem is different. At work, for instance, I have well over 40 passwords I have to remember, they all regularly change and they all use different rules for creating a password. You miss 3 times and your user account is locked out, what lobotomised piece of sh*t thought thàt was a good idea. I'd sure like to meet him/her once (although he/she wouldn't like it very much!).
And yes, I DO keep all my passwords in a file on the shared fileserver here. But it is encrypted with a piece of self-written encryption software. Some of these passwords protect very sensitive information, I cannot take the risk of storing them in any other way. And NO, I do not want them written all over my screen in plain text. God! What a kakamimi idea!!
I much prefer what Gmail does, show me the IP-numbers my account has been accessed from and when. That IS a good idea.
Well, a clever man once said: 'You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig'.
Microsoft has 3 problems with search:
- people don't trust them, so they don't trust their search results
- their results are not up to par with Google. Why change your search habits to switch from something that works well and you are happy with for something that works less well? Doesn't make any sense...
- the internet is a gamechanging environment, they cannot use their monopoly to FORCE people to use their stuff. And guess what happens when people have a choice?
I'm sure Microsoft can compete with the best if they put their mind to it. Maybe they should get rid of the chairthrowing CEO and hire someone with some vision for the future?
That's what it looks like to me. Can you see all these people who can 'finally' have their own webserver at home - without knowing the first thing about it - opening up their computers to the outside, ready to be enlisted in the next spam-sending botnet...
My computers are not visible on the internet, and that's how I want to keep it. If I want to take data on the road with me, I'll use a USB-stick.
Register
72 posts • joined Tuesday 20th May 2008 12:23 GMT
Page:
Windows 8?!
At work, we're all still on Windows XP Service Pack 3 and we just had a mail that we might go to Windows 7 by the end of this year. Windows 8? Yeah, maybe in 5 years or so?
Not the only one
No, you're not. It's bloody annoying. Sometimes, updates go into an infinite loop as well, seriously thinking of switching to another browser on the 60 PC's I have to support in the field.
Chrome is starting to look better due to Firefox looking worse recently...
Free services?
I do think the ads are pushing up the price of the products that are being advertised. Ads need to be paid for as well. So, we are actually paying more money for products so they can bombard us with ads on every occasion they get, be it TV, websites, magazines, etc...
And yes, I would rather pay for a decent service without ads, than suffer all the braindead drivel we are continuously annoyed with. Example? BBC iPlayer Global Edition - I pay happily € 6,00 every month to be able to watch excellent programs without ads.
AdBlock does a decent job on the web though.
In the right place?
In use in the Microsoft museum... Probably where it belongs?
Nah
"social networking begins to play a much larger role in buying decisions"
Not a chance. Apart from the usual crowd copying their so called friends' moronic status updates and people wishing eachother happy birthday, is social networking actually used for anything useful?
As for using it to decide what product I would buy? Nah, can't see that happening....
Totally normal
After all, it's like chips, they also taste 6 x better with salt on them!
For now
If you read between the lines, you might as well add " for now" to the line ...only appear on the Twitter.com website...
Well, if it ever arrives on my mobile twitter client, goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
Pfff, what a name
Is it just me, or do other people also think "the cloud" is such a bad bad name? When someone uses the term in my presence, it makes me want to kick them in the gonads, that's how bad I find it!
Mistake?
No mistake. They have always done this, sometimes even making "changes" to turn on all your settings you had turned off. It's a dispicable way of treating the user, but they don't care one bit.
simple choice
Since I bought an iPad last year, I have not once gotten my Windows laptop out again at home. By the time that one starts up, I have already done with the iPad what I wanted to do.
By the way, I am not a fanboi, but a developer and at work I use almost exclusively Microsoft technology products.
A netbook equiped with Win XP was the only thing that was acceptable at home before, having a half decent battery life if used sensibly, but Microsoft thought it was a good idea to destroy that particular market with Win7... on one equiped with that OS, if you listen close enough, you can almost hear the battery draining.
Last netbook I had with Win7 had 2GB ram and a 64-bit processor and that only just worked acceptably with Win7 + had barely a 2 hour battery life. A bit more than that when the screen backlight was turned down so much that it hurt the eyes.
My next personal home computer will be the next iPad - whenever necessary to replace my iPad1.
Another vulnerability was detected
Security companies have just released a press statement that a massive security vulnerability - the "user" - has been detected on most systems. He-She will be removed at the next OS update...
Thanks for the heads up
Just a thought: changes to our profile page --> meaning all the settings will be set to "Everybody" and "Public" again. Wanna bet?
true
I looked at the Galaxy Tab, and yes, it is a LOT more expensive than the iPad in Belgium! Over 780 euro the Samsung costs here!
Exactly
Indeed Sarah, but that is just my point. It's the disingenuous way in which these companies act that lets them easily explain everything away and that lets them do this. It is very dishonest but all looks so innocent that it works!
I honestly believe that not many things in this industry happen 'by accident'...
We're all screwed anyway
Maybe you think I'm paranoid? Hah, let me give you a couple of examples:
My wife says to me that her Facebook chat no longer appears at the bottom of her window (she uses a Mac and Firefox), so she takes our laptop which has Windows XP with IE, where she says that 'at least' she can chat. So I investigate... change the useragent on the Mac to simulate using IE under Windows and hey, magically the chat-box reappears in the window.
A week later I read in the press that IE has stopped losing market share and has re-gained a little on it's competitors. Riiight! My guess is Microsoft knows exactly how potent half a billion users are and what difference a few well-chosen tweaks can make. But this is all under the radar, and even the IT-press hasn't picked up on this stunt. I think the bond between Facebook and Microsoft is A LOT deeper than they are letting on.
Facebook chenanigans? I only use a couple of games on Facebook, one of these is Bejeweled Blitz. Now, ALL privacy settings in Facebook have been set by me using a fine tooth-comb so not a single application has the right to get my email address. Suprise surprise, this week I suddenly get an email from Bejeweled telling me that so-and-so has bettered my score.
Immediately I go to my privacy and application settings, only to find that Bejeweled has now an extra (NEW) option to let them email me, of course set to 'ON' by default. When turning it off, I get the message that it is basically too late, the application will continue to send me emails until I use the 'unsubscribe' link in one of their mails. Basically, until I confirm to them this email-address is ok, so spam away! The only promise Facebook gives is, if I choose to change my email-address, they will not communicate this address to Bejeweled. What they really mean is 'until we plant another new setting and give your address to anyone we like'! The sick part? The 'new' setting has now totally disappeared, like it was never there.
The lesson is: EVERYTHING you put on facebook is PUBLIC for everyone to see and for every company that is willing to pay for it to take full advantage of.
If you think otherwise, you're very naïve.
How can I explain?
Now, let's see... how do I explain this?
If I had to choose between an Android phone and a Windows7 Phone? Let's say they were both free but on top of the Windows phone I would also get 100 euro cash extra. Which one would I choose?
The Android one every time!
Not very accurate
"It has seen millions of downloads and has been on the sharp-end of Microsoft's developer and media push in the last few years"
Nono, it is being pushed onto every new PC sold, thàt is accurate. Millions of downloads? They do try to bolt it onto every other thing you might like to download, that much is true. But real, Silverlight only downloads for the purpose of having Silverlight on your PC? Codswallop!
A fitting end
... to this World Cup would be that both teams would be declared as losers! This has been the year of the extremely annoying vuvuzela, the boring-to-tears matches and the incapable-to-get-anything right refereeing.
What a disgrace. All I would need now is for Holland to become the world champion to make sure I'd never watch football again.
Just the point
The game is just the bait, all they're after is your personal data, which they can then sell on. Big brother IS watching us all the time.
Sooner or later, greedy creeps always shoot themselves in the foot though. Example? The Scrabble facebook game. They aren't getting enough money from your personal data, so they'll stick a minute of adds in front of the game you have to sit through before even getting to the game. That's game over for me. I don't want to spend a minute waiting for a game I'm going to spend 30 seconds on to begin with...
The thing about Facebook is also: if it had sucked so badly from the beginning as it does now, they would never have had so many users...
Not always a good thing
Very interesting article, and I look forward to read the rest of the series!
I see what you mean about new people having to learn the ropes 'somehow' and you're right of course, nobody is born an admin.
First, let me tell you what my situation is: I am employed by a large multi-national company with tens of thousands of people around the world all using computers, part of a massive AD and administered through Group policies like you talked about. The problems we are facing are badly installed software, network drives disappearing or being wrongly connected, roaming user-profiles you can only use on one PC properly, unpatched PC's which get infected with virusses, wrongly set file access rights, etc, etc... The list is endless.
So, in our case, it would be helpfull to have a couple more decent administrators and less people learning how to be one.
The vanishing of network drives got so bad that I wrote a program that my colleagues and me can use to make a personalised vbscript that we can run when needed and that will just remove badly attached drives and re-attach the ones we actually need.
Of course, the IT-services got outsourced some years ago, and since then, the situation has gradually gotten worse. People with no clue about IT inside the company making insane rules, and fresh out of school (or never having got there) outsourced admins badly implementing them.
Sorry, I feel better now. Think I'll have a drink of water and get back to work...
Not really
Better goto Groklaw, way too long to explain in one article. You'll realise once you start reading up on the case...
But, it comes down to a simple fact really, SCO did not have enough money to buy all of UNIX, including the copyrights and just acted as a... no, I'm not trying to explain, you'll have to go and read it for yourself.
Best news of the day though! Big hurrah for PJ!
Don't think so
My guess would be, as the license stipulates the programs have to be written in C, C++ or Objective C, and NOT through another SDK, that the chances of having this banned are rather big, no? Will be interesting to follow!
Cross-platform
Very simple. When Silverlight is cross-platform, meaning including Linux, I might actually try it out before deciding. As long as it isn't, I will NEVER install it on any of my computers.
NEVER.
uptake?
No, it's the old delivery system as usual, it comes installed by default with Windows 7. The same way IE had a meteoric "uptake". And the usual stealth installs with other programs like WMV-player on the Mac, you have to actively remove Silverlight from the install or you'll get it, if you want it or not.
Good old rubbish as usual.
Exactly right!
They should put the emphasis on the database part and the connections from the rest of the applications to the data. That would make it instantly useable as a MSO replacement.
The people who are addicted to Excel are never going to be using something else anyway, as a matter of fact, in many cases, it's the ONLY thing they are able to use.
Maybe they should be honest for once?
And call it Microsoft Windows Piracy Check Program, instead of using false wording like it being an advantage for the consumers? We all know it IS a breach of privacy and the advantage is only to THEM. And these wankers still don't understand that they are only annoying GENUINE consumers, the pirates laugh at this anyway.
So, WGA = Windows Genuine consumer's disAdvantage.
Indeed
Adblock Plus. Simply the best Add-on ever. Haven't seen any annoying ads ever since installing that one. It's like the karate Kid's wax-on, wax-off. Add-on, ad-off ;-)
Just a re-use of a brand
Not the same software re-launched, but just a re-using of a brandname they got in the Lotus deal. Competition's good, the more the merrier. Problem is company 'deciders' couldn't find their own backside if their life depended on it and will always go for the Ms Office option.
Atom and Win7 is FAIL anyway
I have an Asus EeePC in test, with an Atom 1.33 Mhz and 2 GB Ram, and with Win7, it is slooow. Nothing to do with the poor netbook I'd say. I have also an Acer with the same Atom processor and only 1 GB of Ram, and it's twice as fast with XP on it. So, if you want a slow home server, go for it!
@AC 10:06 Misuse of spreadsheets
Couldn't agree more. Excel is the most misused program ever made. People use it for all sorts of stuff, in 99% of the cases NOT for actual spreadsheet work.
Worst case I've seen is some stupid bint using her calculator to put numbers in her Excel-sheet...
Flawless
Installed on a USB key to use with my work Thinkpad and fresh install on my 5 year old desktop at home, not one problem, and everything works out of the box.
I'm impressed.
As for doing an upgrade? Never works 100%. Not with Linux, not with Windows.
@cj100570 - no you're not
Not really, I've been a Gmail user since it became available, and have never had a day I couldn't log on either... I suspect there's a few more 'lucky ones'...
You can comment?
Hah, Facebook NEVER listens to its users. They don't care.
No ribbon in my version
oh wait, at work I'm still using Office '97. Perfectly fine piece of software and still does it's job like a well trained workhorse. I know it inside out and never have to look for a function as I know where everything is.
Every time my PC gets changed I have a major battle on my hands to keep '97 on it, but in the end, a few threats to the IT dept usually work a charm.
I have tried newer versions occasionaly, but to me it seems that they get worse with every iteration.
At home, it's been OO for as long as I care to remember. Gets used very infrequently anyway. On my mac I had a 30-day tryout of Office for Mac and I used it exactly once, then deleted it.
Mine's the one with the Office '97 cd in the pocket...
Password madness
For work + personal use I estimate that I have more than 50 passwords to remember, a lot of them which have to be changed frequently. Most systems also use their own specific set of rules for making a new valid password. This is of course utter madness!!
So, I have written my own encryption software to store all these in a file. The encryption uses rotating realtext and goes randomly up to a hundred levels deep. The strong master password (which is the only one to remember) is also encrypted randomly somewhere in the same file, but to a different random encryption level than the rest of the file.
Good luck to anyone trying to get anything out of that data. But this is the level of mad things we are having to go through to keep track of all those passwords!
Don't talk to me anout centrally stored ids like Open-id or similar, I trust these even less. Get this one hacked and they own all your stuff in one go.
Passwords today = epic FAIL.
@barfridge
Same here, the 'evolving to Twitter' is extremely annoying, and if we didn't have family abroad to keep in contact with, I would have dumped the site ages ago.
The interface problems you talk about are indeed making the user experience a misery at best. Settings and options are never where you would expect them, and purposefully hidden so people wouldn't bother protecting their privacy - just because it is such a pain and very time consuming.
But, it is true though - 'achieving critical mass' has happened and FB is now sort of the Microsoft of social networking. We don't like 'em, but we now 'have' to use them. And, just like Windows, we don't really, but we fool ourselves into thinking we do.
Even if something much better comes along, critical mass is going to make it very difficult to switch over, unless you can convince your contacts to do the same.
Haha
That crap will never, and I repeat, NEVER be installed on any of my systems.
Most people believe these lies anyway
Real world experience:
Installing Vista on a desktop with Nvidia graphics card, run of the mill motherboard with Nvidia 2 chipset, a Topcom wireless adapter, an HP printer and a cheap webcam. Result: no drivers for the motherboard chipset, no drivers for the wireless adapter. Vista not working.
Installed since then Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04, openSuse 11.1, and Mandriva 2008, ALL worked without asking for any driver, wireless card just works, even the webcam.
In case you wonder why all the different distributions? It's a system with removable harddisks, so I can switch the OS in a matter of seconds, and I like to experiment.
Who are they kidding though?
What rubbish
"An Intellectual Ventures spokesperson told The Reg: "As part of our portfolio management responsibilities, we do regularly sort through our inventions to ensure the assets we hold apply to our primary areas of business."
OUR inventions? Hah! That is just the problem, they invent nothing.
Their primary area of business? Squeezing money out of hardworking people and companies and at the same holding back real innovations and harming the real economy.
One change to the rotten patent system is needed --> make patents NON-transferable! Only the original inventor (and I'm using the word in a loose sense here) can enforce - or not - his patents. All these leeches will immediately be out of 'business'.
boot... foot...
It hurts when the boot is on the other foot, doesn't it?
Software patents are rubbish, and the quicker the US patent system takes this into account, the better.
@Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 9th July 2009 11:25 GMT
I just went to the Dell website for Belgium. I have 3 choices my friend: windows XP Home in French, Dutch or English. No Ubuntu.
@B 9:
No, you plonker, I do not want a netbook 'manufactured' in Belgium - I want to BUY it in Belgium. I don't want to order it abroad, pay immediately, wait six weeks and then get it delivered broken.
@Outcast:
Thanks for the tip. Indeed, apart from that small detail of where I live, perfect suggestion ;-))
50% off?
Mine's the one that comes out in September and costs € 29.
Call me old-fashioned
But... I prefer the feel of a paper book. Anyway, at such a price, can you imagine how many books I can buy at the http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ for that amount of money?
Just bought 'Digital Fortress' by Dan Brown for € 7.50 - with free delivery. No competition really.
3 words
Firefox AdBlock Plus
Strong-armed out
I tried to purchase a Linux netbook some months ago here - ALL the shops, without exception only had netbooks with XP on them. When asking the shopkeepers why you get no sensible comments, apart from 'they come delivered like that'. Another monopolistic strong-arm tactic no doubt.
Did I buy one? NO. First give money to Microsoft and then put the time in myself wiping their shite off it and installing everything myself? Why should I?
I'm still a potential customer for a Linux netbook. Anyone?
(and no, I don't want to order one online from some other country)
Scorpion
'I was bringing you over to the other side of the river, you promised not to sting me. You did anyway, and now we'll both drown and die! Why?'
Scorpion: 'I'm sorry, it's my nature'
Good release
It's faster, all my add-ons still work, and an annoying bug finally got taken care of - the blanking out of 'Open in New Tab' when right-clicking on an RSS-feed.
Excellent.
Utter rubbish
What? Is there any point in having a password for anything if world+dog can simply look over your shoulder, read it while you type it and use it behind your back.
The whole problem is different. At work, for instance, I have well over 40 passwords I have to remember, they all regularly change and they all use different rules for creating a password. You miss 3 times and your user account is locked out, what lobotomised piece of sh*t thought thàt was a good idea. I'd sure like to meet him/her once (although he/she wouldn't like it very much!).
And yes, I DO keep all my passwords in a file on the shared fileserver here. But it is encrypted with a piece of self-written encryption software. Some of these passwords protect very sensitive information, I cannot take the risk of storing them in any other way. And NO, I do not want them written all over my screen in plain text. God! What a kakamimi idea!!
I much prefer what Gmail does, show me the IP-numbers my account has been accessed from and when. That IS a good idea.
No surprise
Well, a clever man once said: 'You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig'.
Microsoft has 3 problems with search:
- people don't trust them, so they don't trust their search results
- their results are not up to par with Google. Why change your search habits to switch from something that works well and you are happy with for something that works less well? Doesn't make any sense...
- the internet is a gamechanging environment, they cannot use their monopoly to FORCE people to use their stuff. And guess what happens when people have a choice?
I'm sure Microsoft can compete with the best if they put their mind to it. Maybe they should get rid of the chairthrowing CEO and hire someone with some vision for the future?
Just a thought.
An accident waiting to happen
That's what it looks like to me. Can you see all these people who can 'finally' have their own webserver at home - without knowing the first thing about it - opening up their computers to the outside, ready to be enlisted in the next spam-sending botnet...
My computers are not visible on the internet, and that's how I want to keep it. If I want to take data on the road with me, I'll use a USB-stick.
Page: